I remember how it was -- JR
Berkeley Is a Safe Space for Hate
Thuggish intimidation of Jewish students and teachers is the new normal as leftist brownshirts topple once-heralded free speech bastion
BY DANIEL SOLOMON
If graduate school has any function, it is as a preserve of a serious clash of ideas. But the UC Berkeley campus is the stage for a confrontation of a different kind. Last month, ahead of a lecture by Ran Bar-Yoshafat, a reserve combat officer in the Israel Defense Forces and a regular on the lecture circuit, Graduate Students for Justice in Palestine promised a reprise of the Hamas pogrom, hanging from the campus’ main entrance a pledge to “Flood Sather Gate”—a reference to “Al-Aqsa Flood,” the code name for Hamas’ rampage in southern Israel on Oct. 7.
On the night of the lecture, the group’s undergraduate fellow travelers, Bears for Palestine, made good on that vow, disrupting a pro-Israel event in a protest and quickly escalating into a riot. The mob smashed windows, shouted antisemitic chants, and sent at least one student to urgent care. The attendees, this author included, had to be evacuated, ironically, via a tunnel. We, the Jewish students, had forfeited our right to security after coming to hear Bar-Yoshafat’s lecture. The university had assured the campus Jewish organizations behind the event that police officers would fend off disruptive protest and uphold our First Amendment rights. The administration did little to protect the safety of the speaker and audience, and even less to protect their free speech rights.
The antisemitic riot capped months of harassment, terror apologia, and occasional outbursts of violence from the campus “Free Palestine” movement. The university’s response has been consistently craven. Meanwhile, some faculty members, such as in the history department, where I am a Ph.D. student, have justified and covered for this behavior. My department has been a microcosm of a larger institutional failure, in which “equity” and “anti-colonialism” act as shields for rank antisemitism.
Leading a coterie of Ph.D. students in the UC Berkeley history department is professor Ussama Makdisi, the chapter president of what Harold Bloom labeled the school of resentment. Makdisi wrote his first books on sectarianism in the late Ottoman Empire, and his latest volume rhapsodizes about a 19th-century convivencia in the Levant that Zionism supposedly ruined. Even before the Hamas pogrom, he told a lecture hall full of students that Jews should have founded their state in postwar Germany. The university press office rewarded him for this in an article in which he was lauded, including by Berkeley’s vice chancellor for equity and inclusion, for creating a “learning space” that exemplifies “what’s possible when we imagine, create and actualize the conditions that support thriving for every member of our campus community.”
The message could not have been clearer: Intimidation and the specter of mob violence carry the day at this institution.
On the day of the Hamas pogrom, Makdisi posted a thinly veiled justification of the slaughter: “Just waking up to the news. Go read CLR James, Black Jacobins, on the violence of the oppressed. And then try to ignore the utterly racist double standard of Western politicians and media when it comes to questions of resistance and occupation and international law.” His online verbiage has since become more florid: He has accused Israel of “hunting” Palestinian children “in the name of Anne Frank,” and mocked diaspora Jews as “narcissists” for fretting over their security. He has addressed the crowds that have gathered on campus for “Free Palestine” marches and participated in a slew of events with Bears for Palestine.
Since the UC Berkeley Feb. 26 riot, Makdisi has defended the campus malefactors in a flurry of posts on X. Lavishing praise on an op-ed in The Daily Californian that attempted to “contextualize” the incident, he charged the whole brouhaha was no more than an attempt to distract from “the genocide” in Gaza. In a missive dispatched on the same day, he hit out at “the campaign of bullying, intimidation, and narcissistic gaslighting occurring across our campuses … all designed to make sure we don’t talk about Israel’s appalling genocide of Palestinians.”
Makdisi had put the light to the touchpaper in our department in the days after the Hamas pogrom. Canceling a mandatory course for first-year Ph.D. students that he taught, he urged the class to attend his “teach-in” (organized with BFP), in which he would “historicize” and “contextualize” the events of Oct. 7. The event was then promoted on our graduate student listserv, on the same email chain as a union organizing session. When I balked at this, pointing out the campus Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter’s vehement defense of the Hamas pogrom, a group organized a letter to the department chair directed at me. “We reject the assertions made, within our very community, that learning the history of Palestine is tantamount to terrorism or terror apologism,” the signatories, numbering about half of the graduate students, wrote. The signatories, who were mounting a defense of their mentor, spiced the letter with the customary accusation of lack of departmental engagement on “white supremacy ... within our community” (that is, those who had deplored the Hamas pogrom), and intoned about our “obligation to listen to the scholars whose research and lived experiences center these issues [Palestine and the Palestinians], and an equal responsibility to ensure that their voices are heard.” Hostage posters in our academic building were soon ripped down by fellow graduate students. Around this time, some members of the department started Graduate Students for Justice in Palestine, the group that posted the “Flood Sather Gate” sign.
Protesters bang on windows (shortly before the glass was smashed) to disrupt the Ran Bar-Yoshafat event last month
Protesters bang on windows (shortly before the glass was smashed) to disrupt the Ran Bar-Yoshafat event last month
NBC VIA YOUTUBE
Jewish students’ repeated attempts, over email and in-person, to explain to department administrators and colleagues how these actions were offensive and off-base soon met with escalating ostracism from others and a progressive withdrawal of Jewish students from departmental spaces and events. Antisemitism has battered a Jewish friend out of this department, after the majority of his first-year cohort claimed that “all resistance is justified to anyone with morals.” Another friend told me she would no longer come to our graduate library because “people there want my family dead.” Despite the department’s concern about the situation, administrators have maintained that academic freedom and institutional procedures prevent them from adopting a clear stance against the antisemitism in our midst and the primary instigator thereof. The same administrators have also consistently misrepresented the matter as a question of upholding civility in the course of intense political discord. Jewish students have sometimes felt like we are talking to a brick wall in explaining that this is not the case.
SJP’s antisemitic onslaught began on the same day as the Hamas pogrom. On that day, Bears for Palestine released a statement praising its “comrades in blood and arms” for their operations “in the so-called ‘Gaza envelope.’” The same organization then mounted demonstrations at which participants, wearing masks and Palestinian headscarves, clamored to “globalize the intifada” and “free Palestine from the river to the sea.” The demonstrations sometimes spilled over into minor altercations, such as when an SJP member attempted to rip an Israeli flag from a counterprotester’s hands. The protests took place on the university’s main plaza, right next to the academic building where in the fall I was teaching a freshman seminar on Holocaust memory. I was so concerned for my students’ safety that I moved our meetings to the campus Hillel.
The university’s response to these events was tepid and laden with false equivalencies. UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ acknowledged in early November that “fear is being generated by the rhetoric used at some of the recent protests on campus”—a turn of phrase that was telling in its use of the passive voice and refusal to name names. She mentioned worries about antisemitism, which she nullified in the same breath with a condemnation of the “harassment, threats and doxxing that have targeted our Palestinian students and their supporters.” She even noted that one ought not to equate pro-Palestinian campus protests with support for terrorism (which seems at odds with the declarations of these self-same protesters). Christ closed her statement with a lofty call to honor the institution’s “long-lived and unwavering” dedication to free speech. [For Leftists only]
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/berkeley-safe-space-for-hate
***********************************************University ‘Forces’ Journalism Students to Fork Over Tuition Money for Course on ‘Microaggressions,’ Pronouns
Arizona State University (ASU) forces students to hand over tuition money to take a course that pushes left-wing ideas, according to documents obtained by the Goldwater Institute.
The course, titled “Diversity and Civility at Cronkite,” pushes gender ideology onto students, and one requires students to make a public relations plan for a theoretical popstar who uses “they/them” pronouns, according to the Goldwater Institute, a free-market public policy research and litigation organization. The course is required for graduation from several degree programs at ASU’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication.
“The journalism school at Arizona State forces students to take a course advising them that benign statements—such as ‘I believe the most qualified person should get the job’—are offensive ‘microaggressions’ that make people feel unwelcome. This course also requires students to develop a public relations plan for a nonbinary pop star who uses ‘they/them’ pronouns. This course shows how universities use graduation requirements to force students to sit through lectures in progressive dogmas that add little or nothing to their education,” Timothy K. Minella, a senior fellow at the Goldwater Institute’s Van Sittert Center for Constitutional Advocacy, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The course “emphasizes the importance of diversity, inclusion, equity and civility to ensure all Cronkite students feel represented, valued and supported” and “offers training and awareness on cultural sensitivities, civil discourse, bias awareness and diversity initiatives,” according to the online description of the class. The class also “empowers students” to approach reporting “with a multicultural perspective.”
Over 400 students were required to take the course in the fall 2023 semester, according to the Goldwater Institute. The course is required for the completion of bachelors degrees in Journalism and Mass Communication, Sports Journalism and Digital Audiences at ASU, according to several university webpages.
One course document says that the statement “America is a melting pot” is an example of a “microaggression,” which is a minor insult believed to be unconsciously driven, according to the Goldwater Institute. Statements such as “I believe the most qualified person should get the job” or “Everyone can succeed in this society, if they work hard enough” imply “people of color are lazy and/or incompetent and need to work harder,” according to the document.
Another reading required as a course assignment defines “cisgender privilege” as being able to “access gender-exclusive spaces (e.g., a space or activity for women) and not be excluded due to your trans status,” according to Goldwater’s report. The reading does not appear to be associated with the university and is housed on a website titled, “its pronounced metrosexual.”
Colleges around the U.S. have implemented similar classes pushing the tenets of gender ideology and critical race theory.
Princeton University made headlines in 2022 after adding “FAT: The F-Word and the Public Body” and “Anthropology of Religion: Fetishism and Decolonization” to the school’s catalog. Wesleyan University offered one course in the 2023-2024 school year, titled “Queer Russia,” which offers students an overview of how queer people have influenced Russian culture.
The University of Chicago offered one class titled “Queering God,” which questions if God is queer and how queerness is related to the idea of God. “What does queerness have to do with Judaism, Christianity, or Islam?” the course description reads.
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Every school in NSW to offer gifted education programs
I am all in favour of this. It will be a great help to many students in crummy State schools. It is probably not important to really high IQ students, however. They will do well in any system. I did not go to school at all for my Senior exam. I just taught myself all in one year. Others in my IQ bracket should probably do the same
High potential and gifted education will be rolled out in every public school in the state under a new plan to challenge the students who are not reaching their full potential.
Such programs were available in only half of the state’s public schools, Education Minister Prue Car told the Sydney Morning Herald’s Schools Summit on Thursday, but fixing that would depend on tackling the state’s teacher shortage.
She said teachers had been “gaslit” by the previous government into thinking there was not a crisis in the sector.
“Parents deserve to see high potential and gifted education inside the doors of every local school,” Car said.
“Parents want confidence that regardless of their choice of school, that the learning environment will bring out the best in their child.
“Our vision is that in NSW, high potential and gifted education will be delivered in every public school, in a high-quality offering, in a way that is valued by students, parents and teachers alike.”
Under the plan, public schools will identify high potential students across four domains: intellectual, creative, social-emotional and physical.
A 2021 policy was supposed to make gifted education training available at all schools to ensure gifted students were extended even if they did not attend a selective school or opportunity class. However, only half of the state’s schools have the programs in place.
University of NSW researcher Professor Jae Jung said the extent to which the current gifted program was being taken up was highly variable.
The Sydney schools that have surged past 3000 students
“There needs to be a follow-up process and assessment to understand to what extent it is being implemented,” he said.
“One way to ensure gifted education practices are implemented is to guarantee all teachers have gifted education training at the pre-service teacher training level. There also needs to be a mandatory requirement that gifted education programs are available in all schools.”
Gifted education can take different forms including grade skipping, gifted classes and curriculum differentiation within the regular classroom, Jung said.
Car told the summit the challenges the public school system had faced, such as a lack of staff or resources, had left some communities wanting their schools to deliver more gifted education programs.
She said teachers felt “gaslit” by those supposed to support them, and that their challenging experiences in the classroom were being dismissed.
“They were told there was no shortage. That it was a beat-up,” Car said.
A research review by the NSW Department of Education previously found gifted children comprised the top 10 per cent of students, but up to 40 per cent of them were under-achieving.
If at least 10 per cent of students are gifted, 80,000 students in NSW public schools have high potential.
It found that without help to turn their promise into achievement, the students might never achieve their potential.
Car also announced at the summit that she had asked the NSW Education Standards Authority to conduct a review into professional development requirements for teachers and whether they were preventing them for undertaking learning that met their individual needs.
“I asked that NESA consider the administrative burden for teachers … as well as the professionalism of teachers in being able to identify their own professional learning priorities,” she said.
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My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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